The McCain campaign has set its sights on Pennsylvania, even though they trail wildly in the polls there. To them, it’s a turnkey state.

I’ve heard Pennslyvania described as “Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in between. As John Murtha regrettably noted, parts of the in-between are “redneck” and “racist”.

So when Hillary campaigned in that state, she sacrificed Geraldine Ferraro up, having her make some racist comments about Obama, and then resign her post. The comments were most assuredly aimed at the in-between area.

So I’m a little bit curious about Ashley Todd’s venture into infamy this week – her claims that she was attacked by a six-foot-four black man who carved a ‘B’ on her face. It’s the kind of thing that would play well to racist sentiments. When it happened, the McCain people were all over it, beating the police to the media. And it turns out that Todd is a McCain volunteer.

Politics can be seamy. Obviously this is only speculation, but the Todd incident struck me as timely, and as something that would have dovetailed nicely with McCain’s efforts to pull Pennsylvania out of the Obama column.

Addendum: Well, I’m not the only curious one. According to this Raw Story item, the McCain people knew far too much about this attack far too soon.

Addendum: Read what Josh Marshall has to say.

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Most people are religious to some degree or another, but also have their heads planted in the real world. Religion is mostly something we inherit from our parents who inherited it from their parents … on and on. Religious icons are usually mother/father substitutes, and they offer great comfort to people in dealing with the inevitable pain and trouble and suffering that is part of life. So be it.

But there’s a portion of the population for whom religion is a club – a way of expressing their desire to control the behavior of other people, a way to self-justify while demonizing people who disagree with them. They are called fundamentalists, evangelicals, and other names. I’ve wondered for some time if there is some mental derangement that underlies such destructive belief systems.

Listen to Crazy Tracy – she’s only letting us in for a brief glimpse at her soul. She’s only telling us a little bit. But it’s enough. Barack Obama is not just a man with a world view – he’s some incarnation of evil, likely the devil, certainly Muslim. Tracy has a fire burning in her, a desire to see Obama punished, and likewise to all of us evil enough to support him. She’s not all there.

There are a lot like her. America is off-the-charts fundamentalist, a lot like Iran in that regard. Jimmy Carter was the first president in my lifetime who tapped the electoral potential of the Christian Right – he used them to some degree of success in his run in 1976. But the Republicans spotted the enormous potential for these people, who as a voting bloc tend to go all in or all out. From 1980 forward, the Republicans used the abortion issue enlist the Christian Right to their cause. Since that time, they have become an essential part of the party’s base.

The question is, of course, how much power they really have. The Republicans have skillfully managed them, taking their support and giving them little in return. But they are getting bolder, demanding more. Bush tossed them the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, and a couple of Supreme Court judges who may (or may not) overturn Roe v Wade. But the primary thrust of the Republicans has been far from religious – they are the party of top-down economics, and their art is to get people to vote against their own self-interest. The Christians have been an essential force in that effort, even as they fail to understand what it has done to them and all of us.

All things in moderation. A little religion is good, I suppose. A lot can be, and has been, very bad for us.

Footnote: If Roe v Wade is overturned, will the Christian Right recede again into the shadows? Will Republicans keep the issue alive?

This is an interesting letter written in response to a Glenn Greenwald piece called “Another Myth Fallen: Obama’s “Jewish Problem”. Seems Palin’s negatives are not just skin deep. She has cost him an entire constituency.

My Jewish Spouse…

…had been worried about the elderly Jews in Florida. A lot of them were looking to support McCain in this election due to the fact that Obama has a Muslim middle name, Obama is black and McCain is believed to be more pro-Israel.

But a few weeks after Palin, that worry was gone. “There’s no way they’ll vote for McCain now. They realize who Palin is. Their kids and grandkids won’t let them vote for McCain. Their kids will make them watch youtube” (This was said before Sarah Silverman’s “Great Schlepp”).

The youtube videos of Palin in her church were all over the net. Palin talking about “how great it was gettin’ saved,” Palin getting a blessing from one of her pastors who asked God to watch over Palin as she is the governor of Alaska, a “refuge state” for the “lower 48” in the End Days. There was no mistaking his message – End Days are near and Alaska will be a “refuge” state not just because of its geographic location, but because of all the evangelicals who live there and who have prepped for the Rapture. And let’s not forget Palin’s evangelical witch doctor.

Then there’s Palin saying that creationism should be taught along with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in science classes. Yeah, that’s what retired Jews in Miami want their grandchildren learning in public school, right? That creationism is valid scientific theory?

Palin constantly extols the unsullied virtues of smalltown America while insulting community activists and slick urban types. Smalltown America, says Palin, is the “real” America. Yeah, and how many older Jews come from small American towns? Very few. Most of those who retired to Florida are either urbanites who helped found the suburbs after WWII, or they are the first generation who grew up in postwar suburbs. They know what Palin means when she talks of “smalltown values” in the “real America.” She means white Christians. Not blacks. Not Latinos. Not recent immigrants. And not Jews. Especially those lib’rul Jews who run Hollywood and the banks and who were born and raised in Brooklyn and made sure their kids went to college – especially those “elite” colleges where the lib’rul Jews seem to make up the entire faculty!

So how does McCain look to them after the selection of Palin? Like a loser. An asinine, pandering loser whose ambition to be president overrides any sense of decency. Sure, there are diehard McCain fans among the retired Jewish folks in Florida who will vote for him. There has always been a high regard for McCain (especially among WWII and Korean War veterans, a surprising number of whom are still alive and voting) because of his POW history and because he seemed like someone who was not as partisan as his fellow partymates. But respecting McCain’s service to his country does not outweigh all of McCain’s negatives now. Especially his biggest negative — his smalltown, evangelical, xenophobic, intellectually lazy, uninformed, anti-science running mate who came out swinging at the GOP convention, snidely insulting anyone who doesn’t share her background and beliefs.

Good work, McCain. Nice way to alienate the older Jewish vote. I thank you for that.

I awoke this morning to a front page article in our little right wing daily paper here highlighting an AP poll that found that John McCain had narrowed the gap, and that Obama’s lead was only one point, 44-43%. This, said the article, is a result of the third debate and the success of the “Joe the Plumber” talk.

Right away I went to RealClearPolitics, where I follow the polls, to see if the others had noticed the same closing. But no change – Obama by anywhere from 6-12 points. So I judged the AP poll to be an outlier. We’ll see.

However, here is some of the details behind the AP poll (thanks to Americablog.com): They weighted their respondents so that 45% of them were born again/evangelicals. However, in 2004, the evangelicals made up only 23% of the voters, scary enough in itself, but that’s another story. By adding an additional 22% of them to the sample for their poll, AP heavily skewed it in favor of McCain.

Incidentally, there are eight national polls at work, and seven of them show Obama with a large lead. Our Chronicle chooses to run a front page story on the one that doesn’t. Right wingy dingy anyone?

This is bugging me – yesterday I wandered into that minefield called abortion rights, and while I’m not unhappy about what I wrote, a little exchange at the end is stuck in my craw. The person who goes by the name “Rightsaidfred” (wasn’t he the guy that sang “I’m Too Sexy?”) wanted to know, if Roe v Wade is overturned, how I would react.

If, by chance, the powers that be ruled differently, will you go along with that ruling?

Of course.

Why does that bug me? I’ll never have an abortion, my life will not be turned upside down by one night’s foolishness, I am safe from the moralizing of the Religious Right. Yes, we are a society of laws, and yes, we get thrown in jail if we don’t go along, but might does not make right. It merely empowers some people to lord over others.

So all of us men can get together and decide that abortion is wrong, thereby consigning it to back alleys. For me to say “of course” I’d go along with the Supreme’s ruling that half of us have fewer rights than the other half. I’m in the privileged half.

Abortion is a human rights issue. No, I don’t like the procedure, I’d like to see morning-after pills sold in vending machines and alongside aspirin at WalMart. But in the end, it is about domination of women. It should come as no surprise that yesterday’s debate was between two men. We’re entitled to our opinions, but our right to an opinion stops at the womb of the woman standing next to us.

Perhaps we could round up a few second graders to explain this to her.

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Yesterday in my lazy travels around the blogs I stepped into the abortion debate – check it out here, way down in the comments. Ah, don’t bother. Why would anyone care? But Gregg Smith Craig Moore (my bad) had thrown an authority figure at me – the Archbishop of Denver, who had made some disparaging comments about Barack Obama centered on, of course, abortion rights. Archbishop Chaput says Joe Biden should not present himself for communion because of his stance on abortion – that is, to be personally opposed but legally tolerant. That’s immoral, says Chaput – our private ideas about what is moral must be imposed on the population at large. Obama is dangerous, he says, speaking as a private person, because Obama is not a strict anti-abortionist.

I responded with the official teaching of the Catholic Church on abortion – that lacking any guidance in the Bible, the Church teaches that abortion is wrong because we as humans must err on the side of life. But the key is “lacking any guidance from the Bible”. The book is silent on the matter, and that, I said, makes it a matter for humans to decide. The Church stumbles, mistaking itself for God.

Well and good, but it left me with an icky feeling. For one thing, I don’t give a good golly damn what any archbishop thinks about anything. For another, I don’t much care about the Bible. I felt sullied by it all – I was using their own club to beat them. And like it or not, abortion is part of the human experience, legal or not, and so is coercion, and I feel more sympathy for a woman forced to yield eighteen years of her life for one night’s foolishness than I do guilt about the relatively simple and harmless procedures we use in early pregnancy to eliminate the problem.

I discussed this matter with a woman very close to me, my daughter, and I brought up the debate about when life begins. Her answer stunned me for its simplicity – “I don’t care.” Sounds callous, I know, but as Obama said, it’s above our pay grade. And there are more important issues at hand than to legalize or criminalize the behavior of a segment of our society, said behavior going on whether it is legal or not. The “pro-life” movement must know that abortion liberates women, as does birth control. Surely Holy Mother Church knows this, as that male-dominated institution outlaws both.

So I’m left here with a Bible in my hand and not knowing whether to use it for a door stop or paper weight. It’s got some interesting stuff in it, some pretty neat stuff – there are potent arguments for the validity of doubt in some Old Testament works. Sometimes biblical verse illuminates, most times not – it’s interpretation that matters most. People tend to use God as a sock puppet. They are really inflicting their own private preferences on us when they use biblical verse against us.

So did I err in using the bible against the anti-abortionists? Was I a hypocrite? Absolutely. And I’ll do it again.

Addendum: All of this reminds me of the words of Genesis, perhaps responsible for more damage and suffering than any words written anywhere: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Ah yes – the dominion clause – perhaps the only words in the Good Book that humans ever took seriously.

It’s happening again. Votes are being flipped from Obama to McCain.

Two things of note: There are no complaints of votes flipping from McCain to Obama, just as no votes went from Bush to Kerry. Always the opposite.

And there’s no recourse. It’s a black box.

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I grew up in a small town (Billings, a “city” by Montana standards), and live now in a town of 40,000. Fortunately, Bozeman is a college town, and is a little more cultured than most towns of comparable size (though the movies “Religulous” and “W” are not playing here – and will not). Nonetheless, our local paper is a right wing rag, and the letters to the editor are filled with right wing tripe, to wit:

We’re in Trouble if Obama is Elected

Do you people realize that we are going to be in trouble is Obama gets into office? He talks very big and they are all lies. He plans to take our guns away from every one of us.

Biden is just as bad as Obama – he listens but tells lies. … McCain believes what is right, and he and Sarah Palin both believe in the United States of America.

We need God in the Pledge of Allegiance which has been there many many years. … Think about our gas, as we have plugged wells in Montana that could be opened and drilled. … Either Obama’s wife or someone down the line on his side is an atheist.

Of course, I chose that letter because it is so dumb. But the smart letters are not much better. I’m not saying that Percy Ingersoll, who wrote the letter, is a dumb person. But he suffers from something very common in small towns: narrow outlook. He sees very little of the big world, his frame of reference is very small. Therefore, he has reduced the campaign for president to things that fit into his small town mind – guns and God.

Hatred is very common among us. It was hatred that fueled the invasion of Iraq. It’s hatred that fuels racism, homophobia and xenophobia. Hatred is as common as hydrogen, and we humans need to be very careful about stoking it. It needs to be quarantined, like harmful bacteria. When it escapes, we suffer.

Small town people, with small town minds, tend to be narrow in focus. Their hatred is not nearly as damaging as that which emanates from Washington, DC. There hateful people have access to sophisticated weapons and have armies at their disposal. Millions of people have died because of Washington’s big-town, highly developed hatred. Here in small towns, feelings get hurt, yard signs get removed, movies get censored. It’s fairly innocuous.

But we all hate just the same. What Al Jazeeera has done with the YouTube clip above is to focus on small town hatred. But it’s everywhere. John McCain and Sarah Palin are engaged in deliberate and mindful stoking of hatred. They are doing it to gain votes. Their behavior is contemptible.

Bachmann is old news, I know. But have you ever experienced this? You’re driving down the highway, and another driver passes you at very high speed, and later you see that he has been pulled over and ticketed. Feel vindicated? I know it’s petty, but I got that feeling when I watched this broadcast …

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… but then learned this:

The last few hours have been nothing short of astounding. Since Congresswoman Michele Bachmann appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball earlier tonight, there’s been a deluge of support unlike anything we have seen. We are so grateful to the Daily Kos community and others who’ve sounded the alarm on Bachmann’s extremist, shameful rhetoric and pitched in with whatever they can to help end her tenure in Congress.

Our phones haven’t stopped ringing. Many have called in to say they’re sorry they can only send money and wish they could be here to help. We want you to know what a difference your funds are making and that, thanks in part to your help, we are confident that we will be able to win this race. We are preparing to get out the vote on an unprecedented scale, and with supporters like you we will have the resources we need to get the job done.

I am both hopeful and humbled at the reminder you gave me tonight – that in our country’s darkest times, it is the strength and belief and action of ordinary Americans that ultimately brings about the change we need. From the hardworking folks in Minnesota’s Sixth District to all of you: we are proud to have you on our side.

Future Congressman Tinklenburg, due to Bachmann’s appearance, has raised almost $500,000 in one night. I see that red light flashing as I drive by, carefully doing the speed limit.